Interaction Designer Craig Dennis » Graphics

Xbox 360 Illustration

Craig — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:46:30 +0000

Watching Russell Smith do some illustrations of TVs, a Playstation III and some speakers today on another project I was inspired to try some myself. I decided to pick an Xbox 360 Elite (None of that Playstation III nonsense) and found a picture online which was placed in the Illustrator file for reference. Then the drawing and manipulating started.

I love Illustrator because you can zoom right in and the quality of the image remains constant because it was drawn with vectors.

Anyway, below is the final result. If you want to take a look at the finished illustrator file I have included it here for your pleasure.

I Love Brushes

Craig — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:13:42 +0000

Something I cooked up following a tutorial from abduzeedo.com

Download the 1920 x 1200 file here.

Blog Refinements

Craig — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:48:25 +0000

Here are a few more images showing a few more refined areas of the proposed blog design. The main blog page now has extra items on the left at an angle which will need to be images and have a image map to create links. Then there is a more detailed side bar for the photography section. With the image mapping involved in this design it means it will be even less able to translate into a WordPress theme than the current design.

When CSS 3.0 is relseased and browsers accept the standards, I will be able to create the slanted text effect without using images and so will be able to turn it into a dynamic menu and therefore a theme. Unless I’ve changed the design again… which is more than likely!

Time For A Re-Re-Re-Design, Thanks Dan

Craig — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:11:42 +0000

This is a concept for a new blog design. I don’t know if I will have time to finish the concept and put it into action but after a few comments by Daniel O’Connell relating to a similar looking piece of work, I decided to prototype a few bits. I still need to show how images will look, YouTube videos, links, tags, tag cloud, blogroll, search box and comments. Also I want to tailor this to include my latest Flickr uploads (possibly in the photography section) and my twitter feed, something I didn’t do in my current theme as I didn’t know I was going to use them as much as I have.

I will keep working on it and post up a more polished picture in another post.

Here are the results, comments are welcome.

Here is the same but inverted. I prefer the impact of this one but unsure as to how the blog will look further down the page when the background is all orange.

Hardcore Illustrator

Craig — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:54:15 +0000

I have been playing around in illustrator for about an hour watching the final of The Apprentice, this is the result. I was trying to create something simple and not really sure what the outcome was going to be. I’m pleased with the result so I thought I’d post it up for all to see.

Offline Portfolio Concept

Craig — Sat, 31 May 2008 18:21:03 +0000

I have been trying to come up with a design for an offline portfolio. Here are a few pages from the latest concept. I created them in illustrator and not in InDesign as I have done previously as I seem to get on better with Illustrator.

Let me know what you think.

Le Mans Stickers

Craig — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:47:23 +0000

Every year my Dad and his friends head of to Le Mans to watch the 24 hour race and every year they do something to make it fun. They all drive fancy super-cars and always get a lot of attention so they always like to take advantage of that.

Last year I made up some signs for them reading “Lamborghini parking only, all thers will be towed” replacing Lamborhini with the respective car’s logo. I made them using a vinyl cutter my Dad got me a few years ago.

This year he wants to do something again, so he came to me with an idea which I have turned into a reality.

After looking at the logo for a test-pilot society he wanted to create his own with drivers. So the ‘society for experimental and high-performace vehicle test drivers’ was born.

Blog Re-Re-Design

Craig — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:22:41 +0000

So although I’ve been hacking away at the code of the current design of this site I realised that it wasn’t conducive to a portfolio site. So in an attempt to make myself seem more ‘designery’ I will be trying to implement the design I have concocted as shown in the screen shot. Any comments would be appreciated (Russell). The next step is to Photoshop a concept for the portfolio page.

Chrome & Glass & Pretty Lights

Craig — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 04:03:51 +0000

I have just finished messing around in 3DS Max for the day. It’s very early in the morning but it seems to be when I do my best work. I created some illuminating shapes using V-Ray and then managed to create chrome and glass materials and apply them to some objects. What I can’t figure out is why there is a cloudy effect on the plane underneath. I thought it was because of refraction through the glass as when I advanced the material more, the clouds suddenly appeared. Strange. I don’t like them.

Anyway, here is what I’ve done.

Doing Things I Shouldn’t Be…

Craig — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 02:16:19 +0000

So when I should be coding php or learning Python (on my own) I am in fact just pissing about in 3D Max. I managed to get hold of the V-Ray rendering engine and followed some tutorials of glass and things. Really I just wanted to make a cool wallpaper…

I’m still working on that, but here’s what I’ve come up with so far.